CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER WIDOW.
WAITING FOR THE VERDICT—MY SON SENT TO STATE PRISON—WHAT SARAH WOULD HAVE DONE—INTERVIEW WITH MY FIRST WIFE—HELP FOR HENRY—THE BIDDEFORD WIDOW—HER EFFORT TO MARRY ME—OUR VISIT TO BOSTON—A WARNING—A GENEROUS GIFT—HENRY PARDONED—CLOSE OF THE SCHEIMER ACCOUNT—VISIT TO ONTARIO COUNTY—MY RICH COUSINS—WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN—MY BIRTH—PLACE REVISITED.
I waited with nervous impatience for the close of the trial in New Jersey, when I hoped to welcome my son Henry to New York. It was so plain a case, as it seemed to me, and must appear, I thought, to everybody, that I hardly doubted his instant acquittal. But very shortly the New York lawyer whom I had sent to Belvidere, came back and brought terrible news. Henry had been tried, and notwithstanding the fairest showing in his favor, he was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment at Trenton.
As it appeared, it was I really, and not Henry, who was on trial. The circumstances of the desperate struggle, and my knocking down one of the men with the butt of my whip, were conspicuous in the case. Even the little boy was put on the stand, and was made to testify against his older half-brother. Henry himself was astounded at the result of the trial, and was firmly convinced that instead of “proving his innocence” to Jersey jurymen, he had better have let his innocence go by default. We never even got back again the three hundred dollars which had been put into the hands of the man who went bail for Henry when he was bound over for trial. For us, it was bad business from beginning to end.
Henry wrote a letter to me, that just before his trial, before he had delivered himself up, and while he was still under bail, he had gone to see Sarah Scheimer on the little farm which was bought with her money, and was worked, so far as it was worked at all, by her drunken husband. The family were even poorer than the landlord at Water Gap had reported. Sarah herself was miserable and unhappy. She told Henry, when he informed her who he was, that if I had wanted to see her or her son, I should have been welcome. She would have been very glad to have had me take the boy and clothe him decently; but she could not part with him, and would not have let me take him away; still, I could see him at any time, and as often as I liked, and the boy should grow up to know and to look upon me as his father.
And this, really, was all I desired, all I wanted; and it was all easily within my grasp, ready in fact to be put into my hands, and I had gone ahead in my usual mad, blundering way, acting, not only without advice, but against such advice as came from Henry at the last moment, and had alienated the mother from me, lost the boy, and had sent Henry, who was wholly innocent, to state prison for eighteen months.
The poor fellow was take to Trenton and was put into the prison where I had spent seven months. He was almost crazy when he got there. His mother and sister went with him, and took lodgings in the place so as to be near him, to render him any assistance that might be in their power.
I had been idle now for some weeks in New York, and I went back to Maine, to Biddeford, where I lad a good practice. I picked up a good deal of money, and in two months I returned to New York to make a brief visit, and to see if something could not be done for the release of Henry from prison. At my solicitation a friend of mine wrote to Trenton to Henry’s mother to come on to New York, and meet me at the Metropolitan Hotel on a specified day, to transact some business. She came, and we met for the first time in several years. We met now simply on business, and there was no expression of sentiment or feeling on either side. We cared nothing for each other. I commended her for her devotion to Henry, and then told her I believed, if the proper efforts were made, he could be pardoned out of prison. I told her what lawyer and other persons to see, and how to proceed in the matter. I gave her the most minute instructions, and then handed her five hundred dollars with which to fee her lawyer, and to pay her and her daughter’s living expenses in Trenton. She was grateful for the money, and was only too glad to go to work for Henry; she would have done it long ago if she had only known what to do. We then parted, and I have never seen the woman, since that day.
This business transacted, I at once returned to my practice at Biddeford. Among my patients was a wealthy widow, “fat, fair, and forty,” and I had not attended her long before a warm affection sprung up between us, and in time, when the widow recovered, we began to think we were in love with each other. I confess that I agreed to marry her; but it was to be at some distant day—a very distant day as I intended—for, strange as it may seem, and as it did seem to me, I had at last learned the lesson that I had better let matrimony alone. I had married too many wives, widows, milliners, and what not, already, and had suffered too severely for so doing. I meant that my Vermont imprisonment, the worst of all, should be the last.
So I only “courted” the widow, calling upon her almost every day, and I was received and presented to her acquaintances as her affianced husband. Her family and immediate friends were violently opposed to the match, thereby showing their good sense. I was also informed that they knew something of my previous history, and I was warned that I had better not undertake to marry the widow. Bless their innocent hearts! I had no idea of doing it. I was daily amazed at my own common sense. My memory was active now; all my matrimonial mishaps of the past, with all the consequences, were ever present to my mind, and never more present than when was in the company of the fascinating widow. As for her, the more her relatives opposed the match, the more she was bent upon marrying me. Her family, she, said, were afraid they were going to lose her property, but she would never give them a cent of it, anyhow, and she would marry when and whom she pleased.